


In the Coldest Time of Year, Why Is It so Hot Down Here?

by MaryaDmitrievnaLikesSundays



Category: Natasha Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812 - Malloy, Voyná i mir | War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Blizzards, Character Death, Confusion, Death, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Frostbite, Hurt, Hurt/Comfort, Hypothermia, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Kidnapping, Regret, Royalty, Russia, Snow, Snow and Ice, Whump, poland - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-27
Updated: 2019-05-27
Packaged: 2020-03-13 08:30:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18937225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MaryaDmitrievnaLikesSundays/pseuds/MaryaDmitrievnaLikesSundays
Summary: Natasha should have never gotten on that troika. Right now she could be knitting with Marya, sipping warm tea by the fire or discussing the Duchess’s new hat with Sonya.Instead, she stumbled through the worst blizzard she had seen in years without so much as a petticoat to shield her from the biting wind.—Or, if Anatole’s plan had succeeded, told by Natasha





	In the Coldest Time of Year, Why Is It so Hot Down Here?

Despite the snowflakes whirling around her so thickly that she couldn’t see past her own feet, Natasha wasn’t the slightest bit cold. No, rather, she was  _fuming_.

 

Anatole, the beautiful, roguish bastard had left her for dead the moment he’d had his way. He’d hopped out of their makeshift wedding bed, buttoned his pants, told her he was going outside to collect firewood, and closed the door behind him. Natasha shivered under her single thin blanket but fell asleep with the knowledge that her lover would soon return and warm her in his strong arms. She did not wake until the loud rattling of troika tires and Balaga’s crazed shouts forced her from her slumber.

 

And now she was here, walking blindly through a snow-covered plain, a single thin sheet and chemise her only protection from the deadly chill, for the mongrel had taken even her clothes when he left. The second she returned to Moscow, though, she would find whatever dirty pawner he sold them to and buy them right back. The thought kept her warm even through the inches of snow and she lifted her head higher, quickened her strides.

 

God, she could still feel his—his  _essence_ frozen in hard beads between her legs. She shivered in disgust; she wished so horribly to scrape them off with Marya’s best dagger, but the wind whipped the loose cloth around her so fiercely that if she dared to loosen her grip in the slightest it would fly off into the endless sea of white.

 

As Natasha moved steadily through the snow that blew sideways with the wind, she couldn’t help but notice how her bare feet felt against the ground. At the first contact between skin and ice she had felt immense pain, nearly crying out, but now she felt nothing in her feet. Numbness. She remembered old cautionary tales that Marya would tell her whenever she refused to put on her boots as a child; a man’s exposed foot in snow would first loose all feeling, then turn black, then the toes would crack off without him even noticing and be left behind him in the snow.

 

She shivered from more than just cold.

 

As time dragged on and the odd numbness began to invade her fingertips so that she had to focus on her hands to keep a hold of the sheet, Natasha began to wonder if she was even going the right way any more. The trip from Moscow to the isolated shack had taken only a coupke of hours by troika, but despite the countless minutes that has passed Natasha never saw even a pebble to mark her way home. Perhaps when she stumbled she had gotten turned around and never noticed a change in the freezing white. Perhaps a wind had twisted her and she hadn’t even realized that she was headed even further West, further from Moscow and deeper into the endless tundra. The thoughts chilled her in a deeper way than the snow ever could, all the way down to her bones.

 

She was thirsty. She reached down, nudged her frozen fingers into a cupped position, and scooped a handful of snow in her mouth, her face contorted in both pain and relief.

 

She was hungry. Not much to do about that until one of her toes finally broke off. She was disgusted at the thought, but not nearly as much as she thought she would be.

 

Footstep after footstep. One after another. Closer to home, closer to fire, closer to a place she could finally let herself cry because the tears wouldn’t freeze on her cheeks and drive hypothermia home.

 

At some point, her fingers went slack. The sheet flew away, tumbling over itself in the wind until it disappeared. She didn’t notice. Like the undead in her childhood storybooks, she kept trudging, her eyes glassy and her gait heavy. Her hair had long since fallen out of its elegant bun and held in an awkward quaff on top of her head. 

 

Jesus, why wasn’t she home yet? How long had she been walking? Everything before the torrents of frozen white snowflakes seemed blurry, muddled, and trying to remember gave her a headache, so she stopped. She focused on that next step, those few inches closer she was to her satin pillow and ruby-encrusted mirror and her father’s old long sword that she could use to slice the empty head off of Anatole’s worthlessly alluring body.

 

The thought would have made her smile, but moving her lips took away energy from her feet, energy which was in short supply. She held her frown.

 

Her eyes began to droop closed and her knees buckled for a fraction of a second. Natasha shook her head in an attempt to keep herself awake, to keep moving until a light shone over the horizon.

 

Seconds or minutes or hours later, her knees buckled once more. She was powerless to stop it.

 

Natasha fell into the snow, her arm bent awkwardly beneath her and her face half buried beneath the welcoming white. For some reason the snow felt...warm, inviting. She drew her knees up to her chest, relishing in the heat she had missed for so long. The snow as soft and cradled her body easily, resting high and low to accommodate her brand new curves, the ones which distinguished he line between woman and girl. Her shivering slowed and she nearly smiled. 

 

Maybe she had made it home. Yes, perhaps she lay now on Marya’s lawn, directly over some buried fire that kept her warm despite the ice forming a thin sheet over her body. The snow began to layer over her, draping her skin in a fine blanket of white. Yes, snow wasn’t all that bad, was it?

 

Slowly, awkwardly, Natasha lifted her frozen hand. She swirled shapes in the snow, hourglasses and curly-cues and little squiggles and dots. She was reminded of her girlhood, where she and Sonya would compete to see who could draw certain subjects fastest before the snowfall wiped it all away. Butterflies, flowers, even one another were carved into the sky’s pillow and erased only minutes later.

 

Natasha’s eyes began to close but she let them, just as she let her body fall before, because she was warm and safe and a nap couldn’t hurt, could it?  _After all_ , she thought, feeling the snow bend to the will of her frozen finger and shaky drawings,  _Marya always said there was no evil a good nap can’t cure_. 

 

Yes, Natasha would just rest her eyes for a few minutes, regain a bit of energy before she rose to her feet and continued her trek, which must be nearly over by now because she was safe and warm in Marya’s front yard. 

 

God, she hoped the flowerbeds hadn’t been ruined in all the commotion. If she ruined the petunias she just knew that Marya would kill her...

 

Natasha’s hand fell limp in the groove it had created, an ice-cold and rock-hard thing resting right at the pointed tip of a poorly drawn heart, connected to a curled up body in the middle of a swirling snowstorm where wind screamed past the ears of anyone who dared to leave the comfort of their homes.

**Author's Note:**

> I am. SO SAD. God makes a game out of killing everyone who tries to be my parent but I guess it b like that sometimes 🤪🤪🤪🤪🤪🤪🤪🤪🤪🤪  
> Anyways comment what you thought, good or bad!!


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